Discussion: Great job!

If you know how to use a compass, it's definitely helpful. The world orienteering championship has been won without a compass but that is rare. I don't want people to stay away from Star Tracks because they don't own a compass, and newbies can get really thrown off when they attempt to use compass, map and mountain bike together, so I say it is optional. For me, a compass would be mandatory if I were racing although I never brought one for course testing at Albion Hills because I know the area so well.

There are a couple of great photos of you in the Flickr Album.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dobos3645/sets/72157...

Thanks for supporting the event and helping to collect controls. Sorry it ended up taking longer than expected to get everything taken down so I got to the pub after you had left. We'll have to meet you and Leslie there another time!

Great to see you there. Nice work!

A few of my distant friends are interested in a event like this, so I might have some guests next year.

I agree that a compass isn't essential to do the event. I think it would cut my navigation time significantly to just note a direction from the map and point rather than having to look for land marks and picking a direction based on them.

Experienced mountain bike navigators often attach a small clip-on compass to their map board. For mountain biking, you're not trying to navigate to small terrain features where a top quality compass would be necessary. You just want to confirm the rough direction that a trail is heading, understand a trail junction when you arrive at it, or figure out which end of the parking lot the flag will be on. For that, you just need to know where north is.

This is the compass I use for more complex orienteering.
http://theorienteeringshop.com/Compass-Silva-1S-Je...

It has a fast settling needle, which is good when you're moving quickly and changing directions a lot. It doesn't have a declination adjustment since orienteering maps are oriented to Magnetic north at the top of the page. For adventure racing, this means I need to do a little math because government topo maps are oriented to True north. I'm not sure what to recommend if you'd like a general compass that works well for both functions. Most adventure racers have a compass with declination adjustment. Suunto probably has some good ones.

It would be great if some of your other friends want to give this a try! :)

Thanks Bash. I might end up getting something simple for this type of short event with clear trails and something else for keeping a line over unmarked terrain.